Fire of Black and White explores art and creation at times of war and a disintegrating world. How do composers react to the horrors of a crumbling world under fire? The title obviously refers to the black and white keys of the piano, as well as to the written notes on white paper; to noise and silence. A fiery response in black and white to a world which is no longer so.

This recording brings the musical worldview of several composers who have written under the war.

Lili Boulanger wrote her piece “Theme and Variations” in 1915. Gideon Klein, who died in Auschwitz at age 25, wrote his only Piano Sonata in 1943 in the concentration camp of Theresienstadt. Karel Reiner who survived the war and three concentration camps wrote his 2nd Piano Sonata op. 35 “Victory” in the underground of Prague in 1942, and this is here its world premiere recording. Samuel Barber’s Sonata op. 26 was written in 1949, when all the war’s inhuman atrocities were by now public knowledge. Benjamin Britten’s “Night Piece” voices the appeased tone of dusk falling on terrible events, and Bohuslav Martinu’s little piece “Bagatelle” is the illustration of an emerging new world and new hope through children.

A collapsing world : The three great Piano Sonatas brought here have this in common: they are written, at least partly, using the twelve-tone technique developed by Arnold Schönberg and associated with the Second Viennese School. The development of this new musical language coincides with the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It’s structure is based on the equal use of twelve notes rather than on tonal relations of harmonics. An attempt to bring order to chaos.